When my brother was three years old my mom went out to lunch.  Literally, not figuratively.

It was only that one time, too.  Otherwise, she was home with us always [wink!].

She left us in our dad’s care for the afternoon and he thought it was the perfect sunny day to attach a trailer to his riding lawn mower for some heavy-duty yard work.

And since we were both too small to be trusted out of his sight, he let us ride in the trailer attached to the mower.

And since my brother was the most curious little boy you’d ever meet, he decided to fiddle with the pin holding the trailer to the hitch at the back of the riding mower.  While we were driving up the driveway, he pulled out the pin and the trailer came unhitched from the tractor.

And we tumbled out.

Because little brother was concentrating so hard on pulling that pin out, his tongue was sort of hanging out of his mouth in deep determination and when the pin came loose his sharp little baby teeth bit right through half of it.

Horrified by the sight of all that blood and dear brother’s screaming (which he rarely did), my dad ran to our neighbors to drop me off and took him to the emergency room.

By the time my mother got there – did you know, btw, tongues can be stitched? – my dad was pale as all get-out and my brother was sucking on a freeze pop, sharing stories of his afternoon at the hospital in garbled, swollen tongue talk.

My good friend took her little boy to the emergency room for the first time this week after he jumped off the sofa.  He was acting okay, then he started limping and complaining.

He’s totally fine now and back to his little boy self.

She said she swears he’ll give her heart failure at a very young age.